


Un-Trivial Pursuits

by QuailiTea



Series: Nerds of a Feather [1]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bars and Pubs, F/M, trivia night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 00:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14738766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuailiTea/pseuds/QuailiTea
Summary: I saw a wish floating around Tumblr for a modern AU where Jack and Phryne meet at a pub quiz. Ask and you shall receive!





	Un-Trivial Pursuits

“Look, all I’m saying is nobody has the right to look that pretty while the word ‘hemi-parasitic’ is coming out of his mouth.” Phryne scowled. “That would have been our highest-scoring win ever. And who were they anyway? I’ll bet he was googling under the table.”

“Something to do with pharmaceuticals,” Dot said. “The team name was some sort of pun on medicine. I can’t really remember.”

“Shocking,” quipped Mac, sipping her Old Fashioned. “Three steel-trap minds between us, and both of you so smitten you can’t actually remember anything about the team that just tied us at a pub quiz.” Dot blushed, but merely nursed her virgin strawberry daquiri.

“Smitten!” Phryne scowled again, but Mac shrugged and rolled her eyes.

“You don’t like it, being beaten by a pretty man,” said her friend. “Let alone on your best categories.” She swirled her drink and waved casually as some of the other players passed them on their way out of the bar. It was getting on, but Mac wasn’t on call tomorrow, so she could afford to linger and flirt a little. That is, if Phryne would ever wind down about the quiz.

“I have no objection to being beaten fairly,” Phryne had replied. “What I object to is a man whose ego is so staked on a game of trivia that he would have to resort to something as pedestrian as cheating when it looked like a woman might beat him!”

“But Miss Fi… er… Phryne,” ventured Dot, a trifle timidly, “there was a woman on their team.” She hated to contradict – she was still only a junior consultant, with quite a lot to learn from her ostentatious mentor, but Miss Fisher’s ranting did seem a bit unfair.

“Well, she was hardly doing the answering when Mr. Cheekbones-that-can-cut-glass went on his tear, now was she?”

“Phryne, you answered _wrong_ ,” Mac insisted. “Why you answered about anatomical structures at all, when that’s my department, I do not know.”

“Well, I’m going over there,” she said. “I want to know what kind of person takes trivia so seriously as all that.” She stood and stalked away toward the other end of the bar, while Mac and Dot looked at each other.

“But… but…” Dot tried to find a polite to say: “as seriously as she’s taking it?” but petered out without managing.

“Bring your drink, Dot,” said Mac. “I want to see how this plays out.” They got up and followed.

\---

“I honestly didn’t think there was another woman in this city who knew what a cyanotype was, alright?” Hugh Collins stifled a chuckle. Jack Robinson might be his trivia partner tonight, but most days, he was still, technically, the boss. Rosie, Jack’s ex-wife and their team captain, didn’t have the same scruples. She outright laughed.

“Face it Jack, you would’ve taken things ending in a tie better if it had been Father, Neville and Sydnee rather than those three ladies.” Jack glowered. She wasn’t exactly wrong. He at least had respect for the integrity of his former father-in-law, his intern, and his ex’s new girlfriend. Those women though… he was sure the black-haired one had to have been cheating somehow. There was no way someone wearing a bloody fascinator should know the Latin name of Japanese knotwood off the top of her head, let alone also being able to rattle off facts about the history of photography and the principal players in the murder of Lord Darnley.

“I’m going over there,” he snapped, putting down his pint. “Make her confess.”

“Go get ‘er, Inspector Barnaby,” Rosie laughed again. “Put her in the hot seat, interrogate the witnesses, all that jazz.” Jack shot her another annoyed look as he stood, but she only took another drink. “And get the number of the blonde she’s with while you’re at it. I think Hugh fancies her.”

Jack turned back to Rosie for a final riposte, but he was pulled up short. The black-haired woman was making her way toward him, with the irresistible energy of a freight train with the brakes off. A very… gulp… attractive freight train, he realized. He hadn’t gotten a good look at her from further across the room with all the chaos of the bar. Contrasted with her beaded navy and silver ensemble, which looked like it had been ripped from the pages of The Flapper’s Handbook, he suddenly felt direly underdressed in a plain white business shirt, buttoned vest and slightly loosened tie. He felt the sudden need to pull his jacket off the chair behind him and put some armor on against her pending assault on his senses.

“Inspector Barnaby, is it?” said the woman, having heard only part of Rosie’s comment. “Well, Inspector, if you have a problem with being outmatched by me, I’d like to hear it to my face.”

“Outmatched?” He tried to summon his previous indignation, not entirely successfully. “I have no problem being beaten. I have a problem when people cheat at trivia and google under the table.”

“You think I was cheating?” The woman, inexplicably, suddenly cracked a smile. “Secreting a spare phone down my dress, or did you mistake these for an Apple watch?” She thrust one long, bare, elegant arm in his direction, displaying a pair of onyx and silver bangle bracelets.

“I… well… that is…”

“Common mistake, underestimating me,” she said. She was now actually grinning at him, a brilliant, dangerous, crimson-red smile that had shot right through him and pinned him to the wall. He was peculiarly glad he had his back to Rosie, though she was going to notice if he were to drop to the floor in a knock-kneed faint. “Now, as far as _your_ cheating goes, Inspector,” she continued. “Since both of us seem to be a bit skeptical of the other’s talents at trivia, I propose a challenge.” She lowered her voice and he found himself unconsciously leaning towards her.

“What is that… Miss?”

“Fisher,” she said, in a voice that would have made a recipe for bread sound sinful. “But you can call me Phryne, _if_ you win.”

\---

It was getting extremely late. Dot had fallen asleep on Hugh’s shoulder, much to his pleased discomfiture. He kept wriggling slightly, hoping to dislodge her, but she clung to his arm with such a gentle persistence that he couldn’t quite bring himself to lay her head down on the table and move away. It would be like dislodging a kitten who had fallen asleep somewhere inconvenient. Even if she might be drooling just a smidge. Last call was fast approaching, and Rosie had already gone home to her girlfriend with a final wink of comradery at Mac.

“You know,” the sardonic doctor commented to Hugh, “if we had put them up to strip poker, we would have already had a resolution and a free show to boot.” Hugh blushed furiously but couldn’t disagree. As it stood, Phryne and Jack were still deadlocked in a trivia match for the ages. It had begun with astronomy, careered through fashion, television, and wartime history, touched on at least three languages besides English, taken a junket into botany and now the two stubborn players were now quoting Shakespeare with an intensity usually only found in University seminars. But, curiously, neither one seemed to have gotten frustrated. Jack had grown more intense, true, but his earlier irascibility had given way to a grudging, and then an outright admiration. Phryne was having the time of her life and had actually giggled in delight when he had translated a passage of Rilke off the top of his head.

“All right, you two, final question, or we call it another tie and have to come back and finish this next week,” Mac finally growled. The pair’s heads snapped around in unison, very nearly colliding. Without realizing it, the space between them had rapidly shrunk from ‘hostile confrontation in a bar’ to ‘could occupy a very small broom closet without substantial shifting.’ Mac stepped between them and grabbed up the phone they had been reading the questions from. She shook it a few times to initiate a draw at random. “Fastest answer wins,” she said, in a voice that allowed no dispute. They nodded. “Date of publication for _Lady Chatterley’s Lover_.”

“1928!” Phryne’s voice rang out triumphantly, a split second before Jack’s. “Excellent and instructive book,” she added with a smoldering look through her lashes that was entirely unnecessary. He swallowed hard all the same. “Have you read it?”

“I…” Jack shook his head, the image of her reading a 1920’s banned book while wearing retro pinup girl garters and that bloody fascinator suddenly before his eyes. “I have not. I generally stick to Zane Grey. Well played.” He stuck out one hand, and she took it amicably. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so well-matched.”

“Likewise,” she said sweetly. “Shall we do it again some time? I do like a passionate opponent.”

“I’m passionate about many things,” he replied, deflecting. “For the moment, it would be about obtaining a sandwich. Ham and cheese with mustard pickle – though my favorite place is closed right now.” He checked his watch, marveling at the hour.

“I’d invite you back to my hotel, but I’m afraid their catering is lacking.” She took her coat from Mac and gently shook Dot awake. “But, we’ll be in this territory for quite a while, so I’d anticipate running into us again, if I were you.”

“Oh,” Hugh piped up, trying to sound alert, “are you in the medical field like your doctor friend?”

“Software sales and support, actually,” Dot explained blearily. She was busily pulling on her own coat, trying not to notice the imprint of Hugh’s coat that had worn itself into her cheek as she slept, or the suspicious damp spot on his shoulder. “Miss Phryne’s the best. We’re going to Southern Cross Medical tomorrow to help them with systems upgrades. Oh, well, or today, I suppose,” she said, blushing.

“Sys- systems upgrades?” Hugh gulped. Jack blinked. They looked at each other with dawning comprehension. “You two are the technical salespeople I’m supposed to meet for the software demo?”

“That would be us,” Miss Fisher said, another grin crossing her face. “Mac is our mole on the inside, and the one who recommended us to your boss, I gather. Do you have a business card?” Wordlessly, Jack passed her a card from his inner jacket pocket. She scanned it and smiled. “Well, _Inspector_ Jack Robinson, I guess we’ll see you soon.” With a final flutter of the card as she fanned herself with it, she, Dot and Mac hustled away to their Uber, leaving a pair of gobsmacked men in their wake.

"What just happened?" Hugh asked.

"I'm not entirely sure, Collins," Jack said, his mind suddenly a thousand places at once, "but I think tomorrow's meeting and the project it's supposed to kick off just got a lot more interesting."

"She's not going to insist you call her 'Miss Fisher', is she?"

"Well, I did lose," Jack replied. "And she's probably going to call me 'Inspector' the whole time too." A smirk floated across his face. A lot more interesting indeed.


End file.
